A new survey has found more than 80% of small and medium sized companies were victims of cyber crime in the last year.
Around 900 companies responded to the research by the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association on how crime affects companies, with one of the main findings being the prevalence of cyber attacks.
The CEO of ISME Neil McDonnell warned smaller businesses to "pay attention".
"What we see is that smaller and smaller businesses are getting affected," he said.
"The message from us is that those companies that thought cyber crime was a matter for banks and big retailers and so on - they need to pay attention. It's happening at very low level now, it's happening with very small companies," Mr McDonnell added.